And I Will Not Be Afraid Of Your Scars
by SarahShunpike
Summary: The Boy Who Lived doesn't want to live anymore, and in his darkest hour, Draco Malfoy may be the only one who can help. (Title taken from "Mouthful of Forevers" by Clementine von Redics.)
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One:

"In time, they tell me, I'll not feel so bad. I don't want time to heal me. There's a reason I'm like this."

 **China Mieville,** ** _The Scar_**

The days blur together when you've gone mad.

He has a calendar on his fridge, but it's still on January. He doesn't know how long ago January was, but he knows it hasn't snowed in several weeks. He knows this because there's a window in his shower and every morning, when he stands under the scalding hot water for three minutes, he checks the weather outside through it. There's been a long string of cloudy days, but the snow has melted.

He spends his days doing so much nothing. He doesn't get the _Prophet_ these days, what with all the rubbish they print about him and his friends, but he likes the Muggle newspaper. He reads it in the morning when it comes (he's never been quite sure how it arrives, since his house at Grimmauld Place is still Unplottable and invisible to the Muggle eye), the whole thing, even the comic strips and the ads and the obituaries. When he finishes with the paper, he puts it in the trash. Sometimes he sits on his sofa and stares blankly at a television that isn't always switched on. Sometimes he goes back to bed.

Someone always visits in the evening to fuss over him. Sometimes it's Hermione, and there's incessant talking and homemade food and she puts him to bed at nine o'clock. Sometimes it's Ron, and there's less talking and greasy takeaway and they stay up watching crap telly— Ron is fond of Muggle soap operas, and he only gets to watch them at Harry's flat because he and Hermione don't own a television. Sometimes it's Ginny, and there's food from Molly and talk of Quidditch and parties and Ginny's endless string of lovers whose names Harry can't keep track of. Sometimes it's Neville, and there's talk of Hogwarts and amusing stories about various students and there is no food because Neville forgets. Very, very rarely it's Luna, and there's an understanding silence.

Harry glances at the clock, wondering who it will be tonight. As if on cue, the front door opens.

"It's me," calls Hermione by way of greeting. "I've brought someone with me, hope you don't mind."

Harry doesn't respond. Hermione can do whatever she wants, as far as he's concerned. She's been cooking for him and doing all his laundry ever since the Shit, and if she wants to bring an uninvited guest to dinner, she's perfectly within her rights to do so.

"Hello, Potter," a curt voice says from the door.

Harry turns, because it can't possibly be who he thinks it is.

Draco Malfoy is closing Harry's front door behind him as he steps into the flat, dressed in a smart set of robes. Harry, in baggy pajama bottoms and a faded Beatles t-shirt, suddenly feels underdressed. Then he shakes his head because it's ridiculous for him to feel underdressed in his own home simply because a Malfoy has invited himself in. He turns back to face the television, and is humiliated to find that this is one of the times when he hasn't bothered to turn it on. Still, he resolutely refuses to look at Malfoy.

Malfoy comes over and sits on the sofa beside him, though there is enough space between them that Dudley could wedge himself in the empty chasm. He coughs and studies his fingernails. "Hermione invited me," he informs Harry.

Harry shoots him a look, but he doesn't answer. She must think this is going to get him to talk, that Malfoy will be able to goad him into speech. Well, he's not going to fall for it. He crosses his arms and sighs, perhaps more loudly than he'd intended.

Malfoy's mouth seems to twitch. "I don't know how much she's told you," he says apologetically. "I'm a healer these days—"

Harry stiffens. So that's what this is. She thinks he's mad. She thinks he's mad and she's brought _fucking_ Draco Malfoy to his home to—to what, exactly? Be his shrink or something?

"Ah," says Malfoy quietly. "So she didn't tell you."

Harry snorts.

"I see." There's a pause, then, "If you'd like me to leave, I will."

Harry looks at him suspiciously, sizing him up. He wonders if Malfoy really means it. He looks like he does, but looks can be deceiving. Harry knows that now.

Malfoy gives a small smile. "I mean that, Potter. Nobody here wants to force you to do anything."

Harry looks at him doubtfully, but he mulls over the proposition nonetheless. It's not that Harry doesn't think he's mad— people who aren't mad don't generally lose track of what month it is or refuse to speak, and they certainly don't let other people do their laundry and cooking at the ripe old age of twenty-three. It's the fact that nobody has bothered to ask him if he'd like any help at all. They never ask, they just help, whether he wants them to or not.

But then, if that's the problem, Harry supposes Malfoy has made an attempt to rectify it, so Harry looks at him and slowly shakes his head.

"You don't want me to leave?"

Harry shakes his head again.

Malfoy nods. "Alright then."

* * *

The last thing Draco had expected was to have his lonely, pathetic lunch in the mostly empty St. Mungo's canteen interrupted by one of Potter's friends, but then again, his horoscope had mentioned something about shadows of his past haunting him. He hadn't really been paying attention; Mother had taken to reading their horoscopes aloud at breakfast, and he had found it was better to hum and nod than to argue with her these days.

"There you are, Malfoy." Hermione dropped her briefcase to the floor with a dull thud and seated herself primly across from him.

"Weasley." Draco continued to stir the peaches in his disposable fruit cup contemplatively, barely looking at her. What had Mother said? Something about… retrograde?

When he didn't say anything else, Hermione huffed impatiently. _"Well?"_

Draco dropped his fork. He'd never liked the hospital canteen's fruit cups or, if it came to that, any of their food. He didn't know anyone who did. "Well what?"

"Don't you know why I'm here?"

It took a great deal of restraint for him to refrain from asking her if the reason was _obvious_ , but he managed. "I'm afraid I don't."

She glanced around, as though worried someone might be listening in. She needn't have; it was well past the usual lunch rush and, even if it were the customary time when people who weren't extraordinarily overworked generally consumed their lunch, there would have been about six people eating in the dingy room at most. "This is about Harry."

Draco arched an eyebrow. She must be having him on. "What about him, Weasley?"

Hermione looked rather unimpressed. "You're a lot of things, Malfoy, but thick isn't one of them."

"Thank you for that assessment," he replied, perhaps a bit more bitingly than he'd intended.

She blessedly ignored this breach of etiquette. "You were here that night, weren't you? At New Year's?"

Ah. That. Draco _had_ , in fact, been on duty on the night in question; or rather, just getting off his shift. "I fail to see what _that_ has to do with me."

Hermione wrung her hands. He'd seen her in frenzies like this before, when they were at school. She'd had that same expression most of the year when Harry wound up competing in the Triwizard. "Look, Malfoy… I know you and Harry have never exactly been friends, but the _Prophet's_ been saying that you're one of the most qualified healers in this field—"

He scoffed. "You know better than to believe anything the _Prophet_ says about me."

"You founded the psychiatric ward of this hospital nearly the moment your residency was up," Hermione said, her voice taking on a more lawyerly tone as she made her case. "You've been applying Muggle research on various mental health conditions to the way wizards treat their own psychiatric patients. You've helped countless survivors of the war. You've single-handedly revolutionized the way wizards look at mental illness—"

"That's enough." Draco squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Merlin, Weasley, I just gave money to the right people. I've only been here in an official healer capacity for three years; _don't_ do the people of this hospital the disservice of making me out to be someone I'm not."

Hermione folded her arms and leaned back in her chair. "You can help Harry."

"Even if I could," Draco replied wearily, "what makes you think he'd accept any help from me?"

"You know, Malfoy, you really shouldn't believe everything the _Prophet_ says about you, either."

He winced. "I'm a Death Eater. Would I be right in guessing that Potter's issues are related to trauma he endured in the war?"

Hermione nodded slowly. "Most from the war. Some from… after."

"Harry Potter is the exact opposite of a Death Eater," Draco said. "I owe him my life, and I'm grateful he exonerated my mother and me, but I am quite sure there's relatively little I can do under the circumstances." She opened her mouth to protest but he continued. "People with these illnesses… they're caught between the past and the present. Being around me would only make him worse."

"How could he get any worse than he is now?" Hermione argued. "He's not even _talking_ anymore—"

"Well, for starters, my presence could trigger a flashback so intense that he somehow harms himself," Draco shot back icily. "The _Prophet_ would have a field day with that. 'Ex-Death Eater Malfoy Drives Harry Potter Deeper Into Madness.' Isn't a media shitstorm something you're taking pains to avoid right now?"

Once she had the decency to look chastened by his words, he crumpled up his napkin and dropped it into the half-eaten fruit cup, sighing again. "Hermione," he said, less harshly, "you're the youngest member of the Wizengamot in a century, but you're not going to convince me otherwise. Not this time. I'm sorry." He started to gather the rest of things and made to get to his feet.

There was a silence in which Hermione did not move. Then, Draco heard her whisper in a choked voice, "Please."

Hermione Granger-Weasley, ministry hotshot, who probably hadn't said the word "please" since the day she'd gotten her internship in the courts, was begging Draco Malfoy, a known Death Eater, for help.

Merlin damn his wretched bleeding heart.

He sat back down in his chair, resigned. "I'm willing to try," he said slowly, "but if he has a bad reaction to my presence, I'm not going to force him to be my patient. There are plenty of other qualified healers in the wing with a semblance of discretion who would be more than willing to take him on."

Hermione took a moment to collect herself. She nodded her assent and picked up her briefcase with both hands, but rather than leaving as quickly as possible, she fiddled with the handle for a moment. "You're not a Death Eater anymore, you know."

Draco blinked. "Sorry?"

"Voldemort's dead," said Hermione, and it was the first time she'd ever looked at him without that fierce sort of defiance, the unique anger she harbored toward him. "The war's over, so you're not a Death Eater anymore."

Draco could do nothing but stare at her, slack jawed, as though she had just expressed the desire to tap-dance on the table. The idea had never crossed his mind in the six years since the war. He couldn't just stop being a Death Eater, like a child discarding a costume. People didn't stop being what they were, and they had to pay for the choices they made, which was the whole reason Draco was eating lunch in this shitty hospital canteen and not back at the Manor sipping merlot with his mother at three in the afternoon and ordering Hoppy the house elf to wipe his chin.

But before he had been able to find the words to explain any of that to Hermione, she was gone.

* * *

Malfoy doesn't speak to him again until after they've eaten. Hermione had prepared beans on toast because she knew it was one of about five meals he would eat, but she spoiled it by adding a small serving of steamed broccoli, one of her not-so-subtle hints that she thought he ought to at least _make an effort._ She's in the kitchen now, tidying up, and neither he nor Malfoy have moved significantly since the latter entered Harry's living room and sat down on his bloody godfather's sofa.

After a long and thorough silence, Malfoy is the first to shift. He rummages in a medical bag Harry hadn't noticed before for something, perhaps parchment. For some reason Harry finds the sight of it comical. The bag could be a prop from an old movie set for a film about a simple doctor from the English countryside. He's so caught up in this detail that it takes him a moment to register how far down Malfoy's arm goes. There's an undetectable extension charm on it.

"Alright Potter," Malfoy says, straightening up again with a clip board and self-inking quill, "I'm going to give you the spiel."

Harry looks at him quizzically.

"Like I said before, I'm a healer from St. Mungo's. I've been working as a psychologist—therapist, counselor, whatever you like—for just over three years now."

This comes as little surprise to Harry, now that he thinks about it. He expects the papers would've loved the redemption story, and it makes him feel sick. Any praise from the press must seem like empty words to Malfoy after everything the _Prophet_ had put his family through when Lucius was carted off to Azkaban without so much as a la-dee-da. Harry had managed to get Malfoy and Narcissa house arrest until their hearing, but by the time the public's thirst for bloodsoaked revenge had worn off and he was able to get approval for Lucius' fair trial, he had died in prison.

"Potter?"

Harry shakes himself, blinking. Malfoy looks as if he's evaluating him, calculating his next words. Only when Harry's expression is once again moderately neutral does he continue. "I've got some experiences with trauma inflicted by the war. Friends of mine. Friends of yours."

Harry isn't quite sure what that means. He can't think of any of the people he considers to be friends mentioning that Draco Malfoy was their therapist. He's quite sure he would remember something like that. Maybe Malfoy is just trying to convey that he's helped people on both sides.

"I know you've been through a lot," Malfoy says. "We don't have to talk about that until you decide you want to. My sole purpose here is to help you; help you understand this mess inside your head, help you learn how to deal with it, help you get on with your life. Not necessarily in that order, everyone's different."

It's a bit odd, Harry reflects, having the schoolyard bully sit beside you six years on and tell you that recovery is a process. Harry feels he could've worked that out without the help of Draco Malfoy.

"If at any point you decide that this arrangement is not working for you, I can either have you transferred to a different healer or stop treatment entirely if you prefer. However much Hermione may wish to be your _guardian ad litem_ , you are an adult fully capable of making your own decisions about your recovery process and the kind of treatment you're willing to add to your regimen. I cannot and will not force your hand unless I feel that you are becoming a danger to yourself or others."

This is the first time someone has looked Harry in the eye and more or less expressed the opinion that he isn't a danger to himself. Well, the first time since the Shit, anyway.

Malfoy seems to be able to read his expression. "Potter, the only thing it looks like you're a danger to at the moment is those pajama bottoms. That looks like a month's worth of stains."

Harry smiles. Actually smiles, for the first time in what must be weeks now. He's so startled by this that it only lasts a split second. Why had he smiled? Malfoy just insulted him.

"This," says Malfoy, passing the clipboard over to Harry, along with the quill, "is the most recently updated version of the St. Mungo's Hospital healer-client confidentiality form, with an addendum that your friend the Weaslette-in-law," he nods toward the kitchen, "wrote up specifically for our contract. Once we've both signed, I will not be able to share anything you say to me or anything that happens in our sessions to any unauthorized personnel, including the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, other healers, and that witch in there who's positively mad with worry for you. Unless you say in writing that it's okay, I can't disclose anything to anyone."

Harry nods to indicate he understands and skims the paperwork before signing his name. He hands the clipboard wordlessly back to Malfoy, who tucks it away in his old-fashioned bag again and gets to his feet.

"I'll need a few days to get your papers in order, but I'll make sure someone tells you before I come over again. It has to be evenings; I've still got shifts for St. Mungo's."

Harry nods again, and Malfoy heads to the kitchen to use the floo. Once he's gone, Harry decides maybe Hermione would be less worried if he turned the television on for a change. He summons the remote with his wand and flicks through the channels, until he finally settles on a reality show that involves various men taking paternity tests to justify renouncing any legal or financial obligations they have for the children in question.

It can't hurt, he decides, to humor Hermione, at least for a few weeks. Perhaps Malfoy was only going through the formalities to make her think he would help, and he planned on leaving Harry to wither away in peace. At the very least, maybe if Harry makes a show of _trying_ therapy, she'll stop her fussing. Well, no, she's Hermione; she'll never stop fussing, not completely. But she might put him to bed at nine-thirty instead of nine.

He'll pretend, like he pretends to watch telly and pretends to believe everyone when they tell him things will get better. But he'll transfigure his own cock into a flobberworm before he talks about his problems to Draco sodding Malfoy.


	2. Chapter 2

"Everyone wanted me to feed them that story—darkness to light, weakness to strength, broken to whole. I wanted it, too."

 **John Green,** ** _Turtles All the Way Down_**

Draco is making himself a third mug of coffee (his last two having gone cold before he could even start them) when Hannah Abbott comes into the breakroom looking harried. She makes a beeline for him, sidestepping two candy stripers who are engaged in a loud competition over who has had the worst patients that week.

"Hannah," Draco greets her with a nod, trying to decide whether he wants expired cream or that awful powdery stuff that masquerades as cream in twenty-four hour diners and faculty breakrooms across the world. He and Hannah had dispensed with any schoolyard grudges during their residency; the strongest bonds are often forged from life's greatest difficulties.

She drops a file in front of him on the counter. "You owe me, Draco," she tells him darkly. "Big time."

Draco decides he would rather risk food poisoning than put anything so closely resembling talcum powder in his coffee. "I take it Healer Bollocks was in rare form today, then." Healer Bollocks is a hospital-wide nickname for Sonia Bullock, a particularly tiresome middle-aged mediwizard assistant who handles the record keeping and is astonishingly incompetent.

"Another one of her highland terriers has died," Hannah answers, opening one of the cupboards and going for the staff supply of ready-made pain relief potions. "Winston, rest his soul, is being taxidermied as we speak." She grabs two vials, pops off their corks, and downs them both one right after the other with the air of a narcotics-abusing veteran. "What're you looking at?" she growls at the openly staring candy stripers, who quickly avert their eyes.

"Come now, Abbott, we mustn't frighten the volunteers," Draco chides with little actual conviction, opening the file with one hand and using the other to take a sip of his coffee. He promptly spits the liquid back into his mug and checks the expiration date on the container for the cream again. _Last_ March. "Shite." He dumps the contaminated coffee into the sink.

Hannah rolls her eyes. "God, I don't even want to _think_ about what you'd be like as a surgeon." She takes the expired cream and chucks it into the nearest bin. "That's the Potter file, isn't it?"

Draco nods, picking it up and skimming it. The topmost paper is Potter's psychological evaluation from before he started Auror training; it was standard procedure for all new recruits following the war. It's nearly seven years old now, though.

"Is this about what happened at New Year's?" Hannah asks curiously.

"You know I'm not allowed to answer that," Draco says, regarding her over the top of the file reprovingly.

"Actually, you are," she tells him. "I came in after your shift ended that night, remember? I probably filled out most of the paperwork in there."

Draco doesn't remember, but it's been nearly four months since the incident. "In that case, have you got a moment? I have a few questions."

Hannah shrugs. "Sure. I don't have my group session with the inpatients for another half hour."

They leave the breakroom and go to Draco's broom cupboard of an office, since discussing private information about patients is discouraged in common areas and Potter's is a special case anyway. Draco shuts the door and casts the usual soundproofing charm on the room before taking a seat at his cramped desk. Hannah flops onto the loveseat that takes up the other half of the office, propping up her feet and looking at Draco expectantly.

"What exactly happened at New Year's?" Draco begins, poising himself to make notes.

Hannah frowns. "I'm not sure, to be honest. There was a lot they couldn't tell us. Secret Auror stuff. You know how they can be." She chews on her lip a moment, thinking. "There was an accident with a trainee—that Creevey kid, not the one who died, his brother… Derwent? No… Derek. Dennis! His name's Dennis."

"Derwent?" Draco repeats, arching an eyebrow and smirking.

Hannah puts out her tongue at him. " _Anyway_ , they were on some top-secret mission or something and the kid was hurt. I think he's still down in Spell Damage, actually. There was another trainee that didn't make it. Dunno who it was."

Draco jots this down. "Let me guess—Potter was one of the mentors?"

Hannah looks surprised. "How the hell did you know that?"

"He's always had a hero complex," Draco replies dismissively. "Do you remember the evaluation at all?"

"Yeah, it was awful," she recalls, fiddling with a ring on her index finger. "They asked me to do Harry's first because he'd been knocked out—grazed by a nasty hex in just the right spot. When he came-to they wanted to check how lucid he was. Creevey was his charge. I did Ron's eval after and he told me it wasn't Harry's fault, what happened."

"Weasley was there too?"

"Well, yeah, he's Harry's partner, innee? They're attached at the wand."

Draco does his best not to interpret her usage of the word 'wand' as a euphemism. "Was the trainee that died his—Weasley's, that is?"

"Nah," says Hannah, "that was someone else. Didn't do an eval on whoever it was though; they got sent straight to Spell Damage too. But Harry's evaluation was just bloody heartbreaking. He kept asking where Creevey was, if he was alright. Nobody'd told me anything about Creevey, and the only way I was able to calm Harry down enough to answer questions was promising him I'd get the healer to tell him about Creevey after we'd finished."

It isn't difficult for Draco to put it together from there. A traumatic event like that would almost certainly trigger the kind of behavior Potter is exhibiting now. Frankly, Draco is surprised Potter had managed to pass the prerequisite Auror psych eval in the first place, after everything he went through while they were in school. But he knows delayed reactions are common in patients with psychological trauma. Everything catches up to you sooner or later.

Hannah is sitting up properly again. "So, is he your patient now?"

"Looks like it," Draco replies, finishing off his notes and closing the file again.

"That's mental," Hannah says, and she's genuinely unaware of the irony in her using that phrase. "Harry Potter asking _you_ to be his therapist."

"He didn't," Draco admits against his better judgement. "The Weaslette-in-law twisted my arm."

Hannah's eyes boggle. "Mental," she repeats.

"It's all very hushed up," Draco adds pointedly. Hannah's never been one to gossip about patients, but Harry Potter isn't just any patient.

Hannah shakes her head and gets to her feet. "I've got inpatients. Good luck with all _that_."

Draco rolls his eyes at her retreating back. "Thanks, Hannah." But he can't blame her for that reaction. Truth be told, he's having a hard enough time wrapping his own head around the concept.

It's true that he and Hannah had managed to put their differences aside during their training together, but Hannah has a forgiving nature and retained her optimistic disposition even after the war finished off her naiveté. Hannah is one of four junior healers to have trained in the psychiatric wing at the same time as Draco, but none of the rest will associate with him beyond the amount that they are contractually obligated to. Draco does not resent them for this. There was, perhaps, a time when he would have, but lately he is too tired to care much what self-righteous people think of him.

Beyond Hannah, he mainly associates with old Slytherin classmates. Most have close family in prison, or else wanted by the government, their fortunes and assets drained by reparations and reconstruction efforts. Half the reason he'd gone into healing was because of them.

He still remembers, with sickening clarity, the night shortly after graduation when Pansy had stumbled into his flat, drunk and hysterical. She'd just been notified that she was to have a hearing because of what she'd said in the great hall the night of the Battle of Hogwarts, something about conspiracy to assassinate the Chosen One. She was terrified of being sent to Azkaban; the dementors weren't removed on humanitarian grounds until Hermione wrote and passed the legislation for it four years later, and he and Pansy had both been forced to watch Goyle dragged away by them, screaming for his mother. Pansy told him through her tears that she would rather kill herself that night than die slowly in Azkaban. If she'd bought herself another shot of firewhiskey instead of coming to Draco, she might have succeeded; her blood alcohol level, when Draco checked it, was extremely high. And early that morning, holding her on the cold floor of his bathroom when she finally fell asleep after hours of vomiting and crying, he had come to the realization that if she had died, nobody would've cared.

Nobody except him.

He had always scorned Potter's sacrificial tendencies as stupidity until it was people he loved on the chopping block. And that makes him a hypocrite, he knows, but until recently he's been able to live with that. It's one thing for guilt to linger under your skin like a bruise that never quite fades, aching dully and reminding him to do better. It's quite another to have to look it in the face, and becoming Potter's therapist requires exactly that.

Dimly, he recalls Mother reading his horoscope this morning at breakfast. " _Now is a good time to right past wrongs_ ," she'd intoned. " _Put all fears and hesitations behind you. Clearing your conscience will cleanse your soul._ "

He wonders who comes up with those things, and whether two in a row that are marginally relevant is enough grounds to send whoever it is a strongly worded letter.

* * *

Strictly speaking, nobody is supposed to have a favorite patient, but everyone still does. Draco is no exception, though if someone were to ask him directly and he was drunk enough to give an honest answer, he knows that his favorite would surprise most people.

Luna Lovegood has had a weekly appointment with Draco since he finished his residency. In fact, she specifically requested him, which was baffling at the time. Of course, that was before he really knew her. These days it can be difficult to tell which of them is the therapist, but she still comes every Thursday at a quarter past three, and every week Draco takes comfort in the knowledge that there is, at least, one patient he's sure is improving under his care. When Luna started therapy with him, she had panic attacks almost daily. Three years later, they average once a month, and her ability to cope with them on her own has gotten considerably better.

But, like all patients, Luna still has rough patches, and it would seem that today she's in the middle of a very rough patch. They've been expecting this; it's late March, and the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts is a month and a bit away. It's a time rife with triggers for people like Luna.

"How're you feeling today?" Draco asks after they've sat in silence for three minutes.

Luna, who hasn't looked him in the eye since he fetched her from the waiting room, glances up at him reproachfully. "What do you think?"

"Doesn't matter what I think," Draco says without missing a beat.

She is quiet for a moment, but he knows by the look on her face that she's merely trying to decide how to say what she wants to say. She finally speaks, addressing her knees. "It's over now," she says quietly. "The war. Nearly seven years now."

"Yes," says Draco.

"But it's also not," she adds. She looks frustrated, her pale eyebrows knitted together as though she's been puzzling over a difficult homework assignment for weeks and still has yet to understand.

He tilts his head. "How do you mean?"

"The war," says Luna, and she looks up at him with her very round, very blue eyes. "It hasn't really ended. Not for us. It just carries on. People all crowd the streets every year on the second of May and they shoot sparks from their wands and they get horrendously drunk and they act like they're celebrating a victory, but that's not what it is. It's a ceasefire."

If you enter the field of psychology with an ounce of empathy, there will be many times when you encounter a patient whose words will settle in the pit of your stomach like lead. Anyone who tells you that you'll get used to it is lying, in Draco's opinion. You never get used to the sight of other people's suffering, and you never should. What you do get used to is discovering that, despite your many years of study, your qualifications, and your experience, you have no idea what to say.

So he says the only thing that makes sense to him: "You're right."

She looks a little surprised. He normally doesn't agree with her gloomier thought processes, at least not out loud.

"A lot of people tend to see their lives in terms of before and after," he tells her. "It's a common response to big life events, milestones, that sort of thing. There's before and after you lose your first baby tooth, before and after you get married, before and after the divorce, the accident, the death of someone close to you. It makes everything sort of clean cut, doesn't it? Clearly definable, black and white: this is me before, this is who I was before, and then a change took place and now I am me in the aftermath.

"But it's not like that. Life isn't one set of clearly definable plot points, like a book or a film. It's not before and after; it's during. Once something ends physically, people expect it to end in every other way too. They don't think about the consequences of the thing having happened in the first place. It's like an earthquake; it ends, and the buildings stop crumbling, but the aftershocks can still knock you off your feet. And even when the ground shakes for the last time, you're the one who's stuck rebuilding everything that came crashing down around you."

Luna blinks at him, mulling over his words. She poses her next question to her trainers. "I guess I just want to know," she says, "if you think rebuilding is even possible."

"I do," says Draco. "Well, in theory."

That catches her attention, and she looks up at him again, bewildered.

He smiles tiredly. "I know you won't have the same house you did before," he tells her. "If I ever find out what mine looks like when it's finished, you'll be the first to know."

She smiles back, a hesitant thing, as if she's trying to remember how. She smiles so rarely of late that to have coaxed even half of one out of her on a day like this is worth more than he feels he deserves.

* * *

The conundrum of the therapist is to be the epitome of preaching without practice, and they're often guiltier of this sin than any Christian. Several times a day, Draco reflects with profound relief that his patients do not model themselves after any example he sets outside of his tiny office at St. Mungo's.

He steps out of the fireplace and into his flat, situated in one of the dodgier parts of Diagon Alley. He can breeze right on through from the kitchen to his room on the opposite end in about twelve good strides, but it only takes three to get to the liquor cabinet. He settles in his usual chair with a double vodka on the rocks (he doesn't have the patience right now for delayed gratification), kicks off his shoes without even bothering to undo the laces, and shuts his eyes.

"Say what you want about the Russians," a familiar voice drawls, "when it matters most, they get straight to the point."

Draco is startled, but his body is too exhausted to react. He does, however, manage to pry open his eyes again. "Evening, Blaise. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Society's backwards belief that people are only allowed to drink at certain times of the day." Blaise hasn't bothered with a glass, instead drinking directly out of the bottle of whiskey that he'd gifted Draco last Christmas. "Apparently no one in this godforsaken country will serve alcohol before noon."

"It's seven o'clock."

"Yeah, well, I passed safe apparition levels by the time it was socially acceptable to be drinking again."

Suddenly put off his drink, Draco sets his glass aside and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Have you been here all day?"

"Probably," says Blaise, unconcerned.

"What's going on?"

Blaise looks at him suspiciously. "Are you going to do _therapy_ on me?"

Draco slides the bottle from Blaise's unresisting hand; he's easy enough to handle if you can distract him. "I don't even know what that means."

"You are, aren't you? Merlin's bloody blue balls, Draco, I'm not one of your fucking strays."

This would've packed more of a punch if Blaise hadn't made similar protestations about Draco's career choices, both drunk and sober, at least once a week since they'd graduated. "You only drink when something's bothering you," he points out.

"And at parties."

"Especially at parties," Draco agrees, "because you hate them."

Blaise falls into a disgruntled silence as Draco returns the bottle of whiskey to its place and spends several weary moments try to decide if it would be worth the trouble to funnel his vodka back into the bottle. In the end he compromises, taking two hearty swallows and dumping the rest down the drain. He's still gripping the counter and reeling slightly as alcohol hits him, when Blaise asks from somewhere behind him, "When did you know?"

Draco turns. Blaise is looking at him intently, his eyes piercing even in his state. "When did I know what?"

"That you were gay."

"Bleeding _hell_ ," Draco swears, more loudly than he'd intended. He lowers his voice. "Why?"

"Are you seriously going to make me answer that?"

This is uncharted territory. Draco's been out to friends and family for about four years now, but it isn't exactly something he _discusses_ very often, and never with Blaise. He's starting to regret pouring out his drink. He sits back down in his chair, facing Blaise, and after making several attempts to speak, he blurts possibly the least helpful thing he could've said in this scenario. "It's not me, is it?"

Blaise rolls his eyes so aggressively that he could've been having a seizure. "No, moron. I tend to develop feelings for people that are emotionally available."

 _You ought to try that sometime,_ says the voice in Draco's head, and he ignores it. "I suppose… have you ever looked at a guy and just found him particularly annoying for some reason you couldn't quite put your finger on, only to realize that everything about him that annoys you is something you like?"

Blaise considers this. "I'm fucked, aren't I?"

Draco shrugs. "I feel obligated to point out that drunk in someone else's flat is probably not the most ideal time to figure this out."

"That's where you're wrong. I can't be honest with myself at home and sober."

"Did you ever consider that maybe _that's_ the problem?"

"Briefly," Blaise says, even though he hasn't.

* * *

Draco ends up putting Blaise to bed in his room and sleeping on the sofa, his feet hanging off the end. His back won't thank him in the morning, and neither, he reflects, will Blaise. He wonders if Blaise will even remember their conversation in the morning; he's always been a surprisingly articulate drunk, which makes it difficult to gauge how far gone he is.

When _had_ he known he was gay? It hadn't been a single moment of revelation for him, but a million little things: his fierce love and protectiveness of Pansy that had never grown into something more for either of them, despite their reputation for being extremely affectionate with one another; the fact that, in the end, he'd always liked Pansy's boyfriends more than Pansy did herself; and of course, there was Potter.

Potter had been a problem from the moment they started school together, and he had only succeeded in becoming more of a nuisance the older they got. Even when Draco had realized his true feelings, they'd been easy to write off; a schoolboy crush and nothing more. It wasn't until the final battle, when everyone had seen Hagrid carrying Potter's apparently dead body back to the castle, that Draco realized just how badly off he was when it came to loving him.

Because Draco had known all his life that the worst thing that could possibly happen was for Harry Potter to die, but it wasn't until that moment that he realized that, for him, it wasn't because Harry Potter was going to save the world.

He rolls over onto his side in a futile attempt to make himself more comfortable. Of course, he's had to put all that aside now. Can't be someone's therapist properly if there's that much conflict of interest. The fact that he's been treating old classmates alone would be enough to give most Muggle psychologists pause, but he has little choice about that.

He still doesn't understand why Hermione had come to _him_ , and not Hannah, or their department head, or literally anyone else. Of course, he's often surprised by the number of people who do approach him looking for help, because there seems to be this common misconception among the general public—and hell, his own friends and family—that he's getting on quite well. In a lot of ways, he is; he's not breaking into his friends' flats and stealing what little alcohol they have, he doesn't lie awake at night in tears, he's still going to work every day and paying his bills and fulfilling his responsibilities. On the surface, in every way that counts, he's okay, and okay may not be euphoric or even particularly interesting, but it's better than dead.

Mostly, he's tired. That's what depression is for him, an inexplicable, persistent exhaustion that seeps into his bones and heart and soul. He can carry on as a sleepwalker—he has done for quite some time now—but it's not sustainable in the long run. Eventually his time will run out and sleep will take him forever, but by then he knows he'll be so thoroughly worn that he'll welcome the release.

Draco wants to be the man that was written about in the papers, the prodigal son redeemed by the grace of a forgiving world, but he knows that the truth is rarely so simple. The world is not a forgiving place and he cannot earn redemption from it if he tries for the rest of his life.


End file.
